Some of you may be aware that I have a new project (Well, old site / new to me). I recently have gone into a partnership with Dan at MonksDiner.com. Since my involvement, the community design, traffic, and member registrations are starting to rise. I submitted our to Adminfusion to be reviewed for the Board of the Month contest they hold, and honestly, I completely forgot about the submission. Well, turns out that Monks Diner won, and below is what the folks at AdminFusion had to say:

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If you are an “Information Junkie”, then RSS is perfect for you.
Answer: “RSS” is about getting live web feeds directly to your computer. RSS takes the latest headlines from different web sites, and pushes those headlines down to your computer for quick scanning.

The acronym RSS stands for many versions of the same thing.

* Really Simple Syndication
* Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)
* RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
* Real-time Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)

In each of the above meanings, the purpose is the same: to have web sites of your choice deliver their latest news directly to your monitor. So instead of having to visit 14 different places to get your weather, sports, favorite photos, latest gossip, or latest political debates, you just go to one screen and see it combined (”aggregated”) into a single window.

The RSS headlines and stories are effectively immediate. Once published at the source server, RSS headlines take only moments to get to your screen.

Why You Would Use RSS:

1. Hurricane Watch. If you live in “hurricane alley” of the USA, you will want to pay close attention to hurricane warnings and evacuation tips. RSS is absolutely a good tool here.
2. News. To get the freshest news on your favorite celebrity, the country you are about to visit, or your favorite sports team.
3. Hobby interests. If you are a motorcyclist, a skier, a pottery enthusiast, or perhaps a dog trainer, hundreds of conversations and bits of hobby advice can be fed directly to your screen.
4. Photos. If you like to change your computer wallpaper daily, then RSS feeds are an excellent way to get the latest from photographers on the Web.
5. Reading your friends’ blogs. If you have loved ones around the globe who do blogging, then you can have all their latest entries fed directly to your screen. This is very helpful for families when one of their own is in the military serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or Africa…a good way to read about how they are doing during their military assignment.
6. Politics. If you are helping a political candidate get elected, then RSS is an invaluable tool for watching popular opinion and blog postings.
7. Jokes and Inspirational Quotes. Add a clean laugh to your morning, or a pick-me-up quote from a famous person…RSS can do that for you.
8. Currency Exchange Rates. If you are planning a trip to another country, you can watch for when the best time is to buy that currency.

How it Works:

1. Behind the scenes: RSS headlines are really simple text files that the publishing web master submits to a special feed server. That RSS feed server, in turn, pushes the text file to the screens of its subscribers. Time lag is usually 30 seconds to 30 minutes before the subscribers see the updates. In most cases, the lag is not even noticeable.
2. To Get Started: you choose an RSS reader tool for yourself. Most RSS readers are free to use, and easy to learn. Here a list of the Top 10 RSS readers this spring.
3. Setup Your Screen: you load the RSS feeds into your reader tool. This is achieved through multiple different ways. You can visit the web feed site directly, you can copy-paste the special code from an email, or you can load copies from your friend’s RSS reader screen.
4. Then you start reading your web feed news! You simply log in to your RSS reader page, or start your RSS software, and you can scan all your web feeds instantly. You can arrange the RSS feeds into folders, just like email, and you can even set alerts and sounds for when a particular web feed is updated.

Examples of RSS Readers:

* Bloglines.com
* Newsgator.com
* My Yahoo Reader
* Google Reader

In a measure to fight spam, and general comment abuse, I have elected to outline what is acceptable in regards to commenting on the vBulletinPro blog.

1. Comments are greatly appreciated. They help add to the useful information found here, and are an important part of the blogging experience. Please feel free to post your comments here. This blog was created for you, the reader.

2. Spam removal. Measures have been taken to automatically delete spam. Spam is simply abuse and won’t be tolerated. What the spam filters do not remove, I will remove immediately upon reading it.

3. Link posting in the comments should be relevant and pertain to the topic of the blog post. They are encouraged as they help share further information that may not be covered in the blog post. These links may be to a site of your own, or to a site owned by someone else, however they must be relevant. If you leave a comment with a link in it that has no relevance to the post you’re commenting on it could be be deleted. I am perfectly aware of the tactics some take in trying to gain backlinks to their own sites and irrelevant links in comments do not serve the readers of this blog any good. With that being said, realize if you do post irrelevant links, not only are they removed, but you damage any good reputation you may gain as a participator in this blog.

These few comment guidelines are in place to make the reading of this blog, and the value of it’s contents not become dimished. Thank you for your understanding.

That sounds silly doesn’t it? Why would you have to learn how to enter a forum? You just sign up and post right?

It would seem on the surface to be that easy, but I see a lot of people have a real hard time…

Over time forums create a very tight community. Everyone learns the rules and looks out for one another…

First things first… Read the rules. Different forums approach how you may display links or even what you can talk about…

The other thing is don’t come in gang busters!! Don’t try to prove yourself and get to excited about showing everyone your knowledge etc….

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